Flying to Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa

You can arrive to game reserves in South Africa and parks many different ways, but I was lucky enough to experience private air transportation to the reserve I am visiting! I call myself lucky, but others may not…keep reading to see why!

My Experience Getting to the Game Reserve in South Africa

It was an early start to the day to move from Johannesburg to the Madikwe Game Reserve. It felt even earlier, since I had only gotten three hours of sleep due to the excitement I was feeling looking forward to my first safari. After an hour run (I had to squeeze in some half-marathon training), we headed to the Johannesburg airport.

After standing in the wrong area of the airport waiting for our driver, he ended up finding us (turns out we were waiting in the wrong terminal). Luckily, it didn’t matter because we were the only ones on our flight to the Reserve.

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Flying in the Plane

When we arrived to a smaller airport and walked straight onto the tarmac, my heart began to beat pretty fast. I saw an airplane the size of the one I had flown myself two years prior. Right then and there, I started to pray that the airplane wouldn’t crash because of the high winds that decided to pick up that morning.

We loaded our bags onto the airplane into the two feet of space located behind our seats, and then stepped right in. Our pilot, who looked about two years older than I, instructed us how to open my door, which was the emergency exit. He also said when we needed to use it for emergencies, not if. My heart beat faster.

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Minutes later, we were taking off, rocking back and forth in the wind! We flew over Johannesburg and surrounding areas at a low altitude, and then climbed a little higher later into the flight. Though you’d think I would be less relieved the higher we went, I became more relaxed because there was way less turbulence. At the lower altitude, the plane would rock back and forth, drop, shake, and whatever else airplanes do that make you feel as if you’re going down any second.

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Landing at Madikwe Game Reserve

When it came time to land an hour later at the game reserve, we were again rocking back and forth. At what seemed to be about 20 feet from the ground, we pulled up sharply and began to turn around. Of course, I thought of the worst-case scenario. I then realized we were just too high to land on the tiny airstrip located in the actual reserve.

After landing, I could see that this “airport” that we had just flown into was a strip of runway with a little hut on the side. Near that hut, our safari jeep waited to drive us through the reserve to the hotel. I didn’t see any animals during the 10-minute drive, but the experience of a private airplane landing in the middle of a game reserve was enough to jump-start my safari experience.